Re: [SG] Low Quality Armies

----- Original Message -----
From: <laserlight@quixnet.net>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 1:52 PM
Subject: Re: [SG] Low Quality Armies

> For example, let's say during a withdrawal I've gotten a squad of
REMFs
and
> I need them to watch a road, report any AFVs and shoot any soft
targets.
> In an army with high initiative, I should be able to send the squad
out
and
> they'll actually go and set things up on their own.  In a poorer army
> though, I'd pretty much need to lead them by the hand (ie use a
> Reactivation every turn until they got to where I wanted them).  Right
now
> there's no mechanism for that--until the shooting starts, there's no
> difference between a CRUD squad and anyone else.

I'm speaking more from a DS perspective here, but I think that you may
be
overanalyzing to some degree... the systems are generally designed to
keep
these things abstracted in the leadership, morale, and unit quality
ratings.
And, indeed, a lot of the problems described in the Arab article of a
low
quality army would get reflected in such things.

Real world example:  the Arab armies in the June 1967 war with Israel. 
They
were generally put where their superiors told them to be, but they were
rife
with cronyism (as described by the article) and officers were put in
place
more for political than merit reasons.	(Read:	low leadership scores.) 
The
enlisted men, once the fur started flying, broke and ran pretty much
across
the board.  (Read:  low morale scores.)  Beth's suggestion of starting
them
wtih a suppression marker might not hurt either, but low morale has the
effect of restricting their mobility rather badly once they're under
fire to
begin with, so this may not be necessary -- at some levels of morale you
may
need to make a leadership role (with bad leaders) just to get them to
leave
cover, which is pretty close to what you were talking about.

Of course, this is all in DS... apply as needed to SG.

E
(aka the Stilt Man)